Rocket Lab reveals new factory and launch site, aims for 16 flights next year

Rocket Lab last launched its Electron vehicle nearly nine months ago, in January, from its New Zealand launch site. This was the vehicle's second flight and first successful orbital mission. Nine months is a long gulf between launches for a company that ultimately aspires to send rockets into space on a weekly basis.

However, Rocket Lab has not been idle for much of this year. Earlier this month, the company opened a second rocket development and production facility in Auckland, New Zealand. And on Wednesday, Rocket Lab announced the location of its second launch site, Wallops Island in Virginia, on the East Coast of the United States. It hopes to have the site operational about one year from now.

"For us, the first big step was getting to orbit," Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck told Ars in an interview. "We succeeded with that. The next big step is scaling facilities to meet demand. We're not focusing on the next rocket. We're focusing on the next 100 rockets."

The company intends to launch two more rockets this year. Its first full commercial mission, It's Business Time, remains on track for November. Another flight, carrying 10 CubeSats for NASA, is scheduled for December, Beck said. After that, Rocket Lab plans 16 launches next year—which would be a considerable jump from the potential two or three this year. But Beck said the company made the necessary investments in planning and infrastructure this year to achieve that goal.

Production

Rocket Lab's main production facility is based in Southern California, and the company will continue to build its Rutherford engines (there are nine on each booster) as well as electronic guidance systems there. The new facility in Auckland will focus on building fuel tanks and rocket cores for launches.

Eventually, rockets launching from New Zealand will be integrated at facilities there, and rockets launching from Virginia will be integrated there. Accordingly, while Rocket Lab won't be shipping entire Electron boosters across the Pacific Ocean, it will be sending components. Combined, the two facilities will allow Rocket Lab to build up to 52 Electron vehicles a year, for a launch cadence of once per week.

To that end, Rocket Lab also announced that it will build its second launch complex at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops, and invest about $20 million into the facility. Beck said the company was attracted to the "relatively quiet" launch range, which means Rocket Lab won't be competing with that many other rockets for launch windows. The site is also beneficial for the kinds of inclinations its customers want to reach. Beck also said the company continues to look for "many more" launch sites around the world to meet its needs.

Looming bubble

With a payload capacity of 150kg to 225kg boostable to a 500km Sun-synchronous orbit, the Electron booster fits solidly into a new class of rockets seeking to deliver small satellites and clusters of CubeSats into various low-Earth orbits. It has the benefit of being the first of these new companies to reach space, but there are literally dozens and dozens of other startups entering the fray.

Beck said he has seen a lot of talk from these companies about their boosters, 3D printing, manufacturing efficiencies, and other efforts to reach a large scale of production that will prove profitable. However, his experience over the last few years suggests that myriad other factors, such as regulation, production facilities, and launch pads matter as much as, if not more than, the rocket itself.

All of this has been a learning curve for Rocket Lab, and Beck expects the other companies will find this to be true as they reach for space.

"This is the thing," he said. "It’s one thing to have a couple of hot fires and do a couple of suborbital launches and whatnot. For us, just going to orbit was a good milestone, but going to orbit once is just the start. The amount of effort that we’ve invested the last nine months, really, it's been just extraordinary."

He sees a coming bubble in the small launch industry and anticipates a consolidation down to two or three players. With its major investment in facilities in New Zealand and the United States, Rocket Lab clearly anticipates being among that group.

Listing image by William Booth/www.photosport.nz